Fully 70% of the people who call me are chasing the wrong solution.

And as a result, they are setting themselves up for misdirecting a huge chunk of time, 10 years, when all they need is 4 months.

You see, the problem they are trying to solve is how to make a better connection with their customer (or their boss, or their team, etc).

And they think improving their English is going to help them make that connection. But learning a language is hard. It takes years, and even if you do it, you still face the connection problem.

Learning how to make that connection with stories, you can do that in four months. A huge time savings, and so much more impact.

You see, in my previous life, I was a buyer for import companies. In other words, I spent years on the customer side of the table, and on the seller side of the table was someone from China, or India, or Indonesia, or what have you.

I can say that never, not once, did I think “you know, what this person needs is better English.” Buyers in a foreign country know they are in a foreign country. They know they are not going to hear perfect English.

You know what I did think, though, oh so many times? “I want this person to tell me a story about how this product is going to fit into my life. And when they take us out to dinner tonight, I want the owner to tell me a story about how he or she started the company.”

Telling a story is a natural skill we humans are all born with, but that skill is drilled out of us, first by the education system, and then by the work world.

Believe me, when you call me, if you can hold a basic conversation with me, your English is good enough. You don’t need more language. What you need is to be able to tell a story again.

And for some reason, humans tend to think stories take forever to tell. But they don’t. A story can be told in 3 sentences. Hell, one of the most famous stories ever only took 6 words.

So don’t think improving your English is going to help you solve that connection problem. It’s not. Instead of slaving away and finding out 10 years later that you still have the connection problem, just solve the connection problem. It’ll take 4 months, not 10 years.